


voice

by Code16



Series: Just World [5]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Enslaved Mages, Gen, Resistance, Slavery, torture but not graphic depictions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-01
Updated: 2018-01-01
Packaged: 2019-02-26 00:31:55
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 301
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13224447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Code16/pseuds/Code16
Summary: 'She knows how to keep her voice steady. (She’s never done it out loud.)'





	voice

**Author's Note:**

> _In-universe words_ : a penance is a magical torture device.

She knows how to keep her voice steady. 

Not when she can’t talk at all, obviously, the ‘shock stick in your mouth’/’drowning’/so on type of thing or the other kind. But if she can put words together and make them, she can do it.

She practiced - quietly, inaudibly, when she’s mostly alone with a penance or the like or sometimes when she’s very, very sure they’re not looking or listening quite enough. It - could help, really, to have something to pay attention to. To be trying.

She’s never done it out loud. Never expects to, unless things go wrong in one of the worst ways and then maybe she’ll try to die doing it. Or get it in there at some point, anyway.

Otherwise - a mage who’s defiant should be punished. A mage who’s maybe not broken enough should be gotten that way, or maybe die, probably with an attempt at the former before the latter just so they can  _ have _ that. 

She would prefer to be alive. She would prefer not to know - when, if, with how much of her left - she will or won’t give them what they want, if she tries not to. 

She doesn’t try. She screams and she pleads and her voice shakes and breaks with the rest of her. But sometimes she has her face to the ground or a wall or a rack or a table, and she gives it no voice or barely any, and she - practices. Meaningless words, lines from books, science facts and songs. (She does not try ‘I’m still here’, doesn’t try anything she might say to  _ them _ , if she could. Doesn’t practice with it. They might be watching after all, see, they might ask her something, someday.)  _ “Newtonium”. “Sky after sunset”. “Fialka”.  _ And she knows she can.


End file.
